is, as we all know, the hard-shell division of their sex who, even without a gift, infinitely prefer the single and independent life in their early youth, and only begin to show thin spots in their armor as they approach thirty, sometimes not until it is far too late.  But if you will spend a few days walking through the department stores, for instance, of a large city and observing each of the young faces in turn behind the counters, it will be rarely that you will not feel reasonably certain that the secret thoughts of all that vast army circle persistently about some man, impinging or potential.  And wherever you make your studies, from excursion boats to the hour of release at the gates of a factory, you must draw the same conclusion that sex reigns, that it is the most powerful factor in life and will be so long as Earth at least continues to spin.  For that reason, no matter how persistently girls may work because they must or starve, it is the competent older women, long since outgrown the divine nonsense of youth, who are the more satisfactory workers.  Girls, unless indifferently sexed, do not take naturally to work in their youth.  Whether they have the intelligence to reason or not, they know that they were made for a different fate and they resent standing behind a counter all day long or speeding up machinery for a few dollars a week.  Even the highly intelligent girls who find work on newspapers often look as if they were at the end of their endurance.  It is doubtful if the world ever can run along without the work of women but the time will surely come when society will be so constituted that no woman in the first flush of her youth will be forced to squander it on the meager temporary reward, and forfeit her birthright.  If she wants to, well and good.  No one need be deeply concerned for those that launch out into life because they like it.  Women in civilized countries are at liberty to make their own lives; that is the supreme privilege of democracy.  But the victims of the propelling power of the world are greatly to be pitied and Society should come to their rescue.  I know that the obvious answer to this is “Socialism.”  But before the rest of us can swallow Socialism it must spew out its present Socialists and get new ones.  Socialists never open their mouths that they do not do their cause harm; and whatever virtues their doctrine may contain we are blinded to it at present.  This war may solve the problem.  If Socialism should be the inevitable outcome it would at least come from the top and so be sufferable.

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